


But Never Start

by paradisecity



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Break Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-05-03
Updated: 2004-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisecity/pseuds/paradisecity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because Greg now lives in a daytime world without Nick doesn't mean he belongs there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Never Start

It's the glasses, Greg thinks.

That had always been his favorite part about Nick, because it was the part that always made Nick _his._ Nick Stokes, CSI wouldn't grin at Greg in a way that made him weak in the knees, would never take him up on a breakfast offer Greg hadn't even really meant, and most certainly would never go home with him on an offer Greg had never meant more in his life. Nick Stokes, CSI would never do any of those things.  
  
But Nick, who'd mumble incoherently as he woke up, blindly feeling around the nightstand for his glasses and smiling blearily down at Greg while he tried to focus -- that Nick would go out with Greg, go home with him, would even call him something that sounded like "baby" when he was mostly asleep and Greg had moved too far out of the circle of his arms. That was a Nick who was possible, accessible, a Nick Greg never had to be afraid of or worry about; he wasn't going anywhere.  
  
And he didn't for a good long while, but then he did. Or maybe Greg did; it's hard for him to tell anymore. It all happened so slowly that by time he realized it, it was too late. The more wrong things went, the more blurred the lines got until it was like looking at a reflection in the water: it was exactly right, but also just distorted enough to be exactly wrong. And so Greg cut and ran, because he had his pride and Nick Stokes, CSI had a hero complex and Greg had stopped liking his reflection when all it showed him was his scars. So Nick got his promotion and Greg got his transfer to days, and whatever it was they'd had between them disappeared as quickly as rain n the desert.  
  
Days are like a whole other world to Greg. Though he hadn't spent that long on the night shift, it seemed like it was where he was supposed to be, like it was a world to which he automatically belonged. The sun is bright and hot and it sears his vision, leaving behind afterimages of things he doesn't want to look at too closely. The desert looks different in the light and on a return flight from San Francisco, Greg realizes just how inhospitable a place Las Vegas really is: an oasis in the middle of the desert, filled with nothing but sin and disappointment, abandon all hope ye who enter. Not so far from hell, some days, and maybe that's why they did what they did, working in a devil's world of death and decay. Greg is learning that sometimes there's not that much difference between angels and devils, right and wrong, love and friendship, together and apart; just enough to matter. But it doesn't matter, not anymore. He's just too tired.  
  
So when Ecklie tells Greg that he's the best they've got and it's typical Grissom keeping him out of the field, Greg just shrugs and tells Ecklie he'd rather stay in the lab. It's dark and cool there and if he tries, he can almost forget it's daylight outside.  
  
And then he meets Kevin. Kevin, who doesn't look much older than his students, who leaves example chemistry equations strewn around the apartment, who'll play name that compound when he's trailing his tongue softly across Greg's stomach. Kevin, who makes it easier for Greg to forget his past when his mind and body are elsewhere in the present.  
  
Kevin's kisses are like rain, brief and cool, tempering the sunlight that streams in through the windows when they lay in bed in the late afternoons. They're not hot and searing like Nick's kisses, full of burning need, making the air heavy and thick and hard for Greg to breathe.  
  
Greg tells himself he doesn't miss Nick, that's Kevin's cool kisses will never burn him the way Nick's did. And when Kevin wakes in the morning, smiling blearily and fumbling for his glasses, Greg wishes it were true.


End file.
